


Addicted to a Certain Kind of Sadness

by dancinbutterfly



Series: Jesse Manes Is a Humans Rights Violation [2]
Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Dysfunctional Family, Family Issues, Friendship, Grief/Mourning, Jesse Manes A+ Parenting, Loss, Lost Love, Love, M/M, Max Evans is a Wreck, Men Crying, Michael Guerin is Missing, Military Families, Military Kink, Military Uniforms, Missing Persons, Post-Loss, Prequel, Semi-Public Sex, Stand-In Partner, Suspicions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-14
Updated: 2019-04-14
Packaged: 2020-01-13 02:30:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18459617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dancinbutterfly/pseuds/dancinbutterfly
Summary: Alex doesn't see Michael again after his father attacks them in the toolshed. He doesn't find out why until after he comes back to Roswell after his first tour and having answers only makes things worse. (Set in 2008 and 2012)





	Addicted to a Certain Kind of Sadness

**Author's Note:**

> > anonymous asked: Saw your comment on archive about ideas to continue your let your warm hands break through fic, which was amazing! Max & Alex point of view would be fab! Alex enlisted cos he knew Michael was alive & his dad had left fake clues about his whereabouts to get him out the way, that's why Max was so mad when they declared him dead cos he knew the effort Alex was going to find him, also Michaels reaction to being the reason Alex lost his leg & his dad getting some cosmic karma along the way!
> 
> Oh man. I love you for caring this much about my psychotic little foray into enhanced interrogation techniques(torture) and indefinite detention without due process (kidnapping). Jesse Manes is a fucking human rights violation. But no, I don’t think Jesse says shit to Alex about Michael’s whereabouts. That doesn’t sound like this version of him to me but I’ll tell you fucking what? You got me thinking about Alex and Max talking and now there’s a prequel to Let Warm Hands Break Right Through so, thank you for that. (also, I now have Plans For Kyle what the actual fuck? How did this happen?) 

The whole town is talking the next morning about Rosa Ortecho and how she got wasted and murdered Kate Long and Jasmine Frederick with her recklessness. It’s the only news that matters. Two pretty white girls, dead, days before graduation, with a perfect scapegoat to blame for it? No, if anything, Alex wakes up to that story overshadowing the best/worst thing that’s ever happened to him and his father says “Shame if something like that were to happen to anyone else. You weren’t drinking last night were you?”

“No.”

“Dangerous, that kind of behavior.” His father sipped his coffee with clean hands and gestures at the tv with his mug, at the picture of the girls on the screen. “Makes you think. Life’s short to waste on silly things when you can do something worthwhile. Buddy of mine’s a recruiter. You should talk to him. I gave him your information. He’s going to come over and see you today.”

Alex looked at the TV and the pictures of his classmates and nod because he could still hear Michael screaming. His dad’s friend would at least get him out of this nightmare berg where even beautiful things choked on sand.

He signed whatever got put in front of him and then his time before he shipped out was consumed with Liz and Maria holding the shattered pieces of his friends together after the biggest loss of their lives. He wanted to find Michael, to apologize, to tell him what was happening and where he was going but Alex didn’t blame him for avoiding him. He’d hoped for a chance to say goodbye at graduation but he didn’t have family to walk for and graduation was optional, so it wasn’t a shock that he wasn’t there. He’d gotten his full ride and probably taken off for Albuquerque as soon as he was ok to drive. Alex thought about approaching the Evans twins but their family was practically on top of them and he never got the chance. And he couldn’t go up to them and say something because Michael wasn’t out and before this spring they weren’t even friends, god. So he left for Basic thinking Michael left thinking badly of him and hating himself for it.

He doesn’t find out why Michael wasn’t at graduation until after he comes back to the US from his first 16 month combat tour in the Middle East. It’s May 2012 and the repeal of DADT has been fully inked into being for a couple years now but only the truly secure are living the out life and Alex is on leave for six weeks. He’s only going to be in Roswell for a week for his brother’s wedding because he’s stationed at Eglin AFB and honestly, fuck spending summer in the desert when Destin and Ft. Walton Beach are literally _right there_. He’s tearing down open highway in his rental at a speed that’s closer to 90 that 80 on his way to his dad’s place from the airport when the lights and sirens go off and that’s fair. He knows it’s fair and is bracing for a two hundred plus dollar ticket when Max Evans of all people leans in his window.

“Holy shit. You’re a cop.”

Evans is staring at him like he’s a ghost and Alex frowns. “Is it illegal to curse at a police officer? Because I was just surprised.”

“You came back.”

“Yeah. Just for a little while. Got two more years before I decide to ditch or reenlist. Do you want my-“

“Alex, can we talk?”

Alex hadn’t been aware they were on first basis. They definitely didn’t talk. He doesn’t know what’s going on if Evans, now a deputy sheriff apparently, doesn’t want his license and the rental agreement.

“Uh, Yeah. Sure, I guess.”

Evans walks around to the passenger side and pulls on the handle twice before Alex gets the hint and unlocks it so he can get in. Fuck. Something is really wrong here because he’s never in his life heard of a cop on duty getting in a civilian’s car to do anything but search it. But once he’s settled, Evans just drops his head back on the headrest and sighs. They’re both too young to drink but Evans looks old right now.

“Evans?”

“When was the last time you talked to Michael Guerin?”

Alex’s palms go instantly sweaty on the steering wheel. “June, senior year. Why?”

“Fuck. Fuck!” Evans punches the dash and the radio goes static for a moment and the lights flicker.

Alex stares. When did nerdy little Max Evans turn violent? “What?”

“I was hoping-“ Evans shakes his head. “You were my last lead.” He blinks and his jaw clenches visibly. “Damn it.”

“Last lead?”

“Yeah.” Evans gets even older as he watches, a hundred years settling on his shoulders and into dark shadows on the skin below his eyelashes like bruises that Alex hadn’t noticed before. “Michael’s been missing for almost four years. I thought maybe he was in touch with you but if he’s not, then I don’t know.” He rubs his eyes with the heels of his hands but as Alex watches, tears slip past them and onto his cheeks. “I don’t know what happened to him.”

Alex feels like all the air has been sucked out of the car. He’s never had a panic attack but he’s seen them before. Maybe this is one because if Evans is saying what he thinks he is then… “What happened to Guerin?”

“I don’t know.” The confession comes ripped out of the bigger man on a sob. He drops his hands and his eyes are red and leaking tears of heartbreak and the kind of terror that goes stale and turns into exhaustion after too much exposure. “He just disappeared right before graduation. His truck, phone, everything, just gone. Isabel and I reported it and the Valentis filed a missing persons for us but with his history—” Evans breaks off. They don’t know much about each other but everyone in town knew about Michael’s history. Rumors were living things in Roswell. “They said it was likely he took off on his own recognizance but he had a spot at UNM and he never got there. Isabel and I checked with the registrar. And we haven’t heard from him since then. God.” Max scrubs at his face and rubs at his eyes, as if that would somehow make him stop crying. “God, I was supposed to take care of my family. It’s the only thing I ever needed to do and I can’t even manage that.”

“Evans, Max, I didn’t know. He-“ He takes a deep breath and steadies himself for what Max Evans may do to him when he finds out the truth, his truth, the only thing that Alex can think of that could have made Michael run away. “He was attacked, by my dad, the night we slept together. Dad took a hammer to his hand.” He has five nightmares about Michael screaming of for every one about firefights and IEDs. “The shit he said to us, maybe Guerin left to get away from him.”

Max looks grey and ill. “No, I remember his hand. He wouldn’t tell me what happened to it but we talked the night it happened about how things were different now and how we were going to have to stick together. He wouldn’t have left over that. Michael’s been through so much and he’s never let it scare him off what he wants to do.” Max’s voice breaks on the word scare, probably because he’s terrified and has been for a long time.

Alex catches his fear in that moment like a live contagion. It travels through his body, infecting every cell and rebuilding them as a home for horror of Michael Guerin Missing Person with ruthless efficiency. He can’t breathe and he can’t think. His whole world is this car and the hum of the AC and the sound of Max crying for a man they both love.

It occurs to Alex that his father may have just murdered Michael and buried his body in the desert. It’s not impossible. He looks at Max, at the wounded look on his face and his stooped shoulders, somehow even worse now than before, and suspects that Max is thinking it too.

Neither of them have said it though. It’s not fair that they should have to but Alex does anyway because its what Michael deserves. “You should look into my dad for this. He may have done something.”

Apparently Alex can’t say ‘killed’ either even though that’s what he’s thinking. It’s too hard and the Michael in his head is still too bright and alive.

“Yeah, I plan to.” He clears his throat like he’s not still crying before reaches out and patting the dashboard as if in apology. “Get home safe, Alex.”

“I’m not going there anymore.” His dad’s house has never been safe, anyway.

Max nods and climbs out of the car.

Alex drives blind to Maria’s even though she’s not expecting him until tomorrow. He’s supposed to be staying at home for this with the wedding and all but he can’t be near his father. He can’t be near the fucking toolshed where he last saw Michael.

The Wild Pony won’t be open for hours so he bangs on the front door of the house that welcomed him so often until Mimi opens the door. She takes one look at him and pulls him into the kind of hug he’s only gotten from her since his mom’s been gone, and Alex shatters. He sobs into her shoulder right there in the doorway as all the cold air rushes out of her home into the late summer air. She holds him tight and says both until he’s done shaking. She leads him inside and Maria is there, shocked and horrified at the state of him, and then he’s the filling in a DeLuca hug sandwich and what little composure he had deteriorates completely.

When he’s done hyperventilating Maria says, “You found out about Michael Guerin, didn’t you? He was your museum guy?” And even though she’s asking, she knows. She always knows everything. He nods miserably because after everything he told her about that summer, he knew she’d put it together.

“It’s all my fault.”

“It’s not.”

“It is. My dad- oh god. Who knows what he did with him.” He thinks about everything he’s ever read about the murders of Matthew Shepherd and Brandon Teena and Barry Winchell and that sailor at Camp Pendleton a few years ago and dozens of other fatal bashings he used go over and over when he was reminding himself why he couldn’t risk coming out, not even to the people in his platoon he thought he could trust. He thinks about his father taking that hammer to Michael’s beautiful face and his heart seizes in his chest. “Because I let myself love him.”

Maria gives him a squeeze that barely helps. “Alex, no.”

“You weren’t there.”

“You don’t know that’s what happened,” Mimi says firmly. “No one knows what happened. I offered Max and Isabel a reading on his location but they declined. Maybe it would help?”

“Later,” he says tiredly, sagging against Maria. He doesn’t want any hocus-pocus right now. He just wants to sit with his pain and try to figure out how he’s supposed to face his father now, suspecting what he does.

He doesn’t even remember the name of his brother’s new wife. He’s too busy trying digging divots into his palms and grinding his jaw to dust to stop himself screaming murder accusations at the formal banquet like an even-gayer Hamlet. His father is just thrilled all his boys are military are all at straight-acting at this very important moment of social triumph, so he does Alex the mercy of ignoring him. 

In retaliation, Alex gets rage drinks himself into a state of reckless impulsivity at the reception and fucks a cousin of the bride in a tweed vest and tortoise-shell glasses in the bathroom at the reception. He doesn’t care what Alex does so long as he does it uniform. 

“They make you look like someone I miss,” Hipster Glasses-In-Law says, hands fisted in the fabric of his dress blues. “God damn, you’re solid.”

Alex lets him pull on the heavy fabric and closes his eyes. “You don’t look like him at all.”

Hipster Glasses-In-Law laughs and Alex hears and feels him unzips his fly. “Just somebody that you used to know?”

It’s supposed to be funny. That song’s everywhere, impossible to escape, it’s reached all the way to the Sand Pit but Alex doesn’t laugh. In reality, the one where he isn’t in a spiral where his tiny world is ending four years after the actual fact, he can acknowledge Hipster Glasses-In-Law is charming, and witty and a good humor that should be infectious and probably is most of the time. He has a good mouth that curves into a wicked smile and narrow hips that fit nicely in Alex’s hands. If it were any other week in any other place, Alex would probably like him as more that just a throwaway screw in the bathroom of the nicest event hall in Roswell. 

But this is where he landed and this is how he broke. So instead of being able to truly process any of those things, Alex just shoves Hipster Glasses-In-Law against the wall and yanks his pants down. His pain gives everything a bright crackling edge including his arousal. 

“That’s okay. Do whatever you need to, soldier.” He puts his mouth on the collar of Alex’s jacket, tasting fabric instead of skin. “I’m not thinking about you either.” So Alex calls him Guerin and kisses him with eyes closed and hates himself during every second of it.

He leaves after that. He doesn’t want to cuddle and he doesn’t want to explain. He just needs to leave. He sees his dad eyeing him as he cuts through the hall on his way out and tries not to look at him. He’s not strong enough to stay quiet if he’s stopped.

He gets into the cold dry air without incident and finds Max waiting for him. He looks as if he he’s just been standing around, waiting for Alex to stumble out.

“Arrive alive,” Max says, holding open the door of his cruiser and Alex is too sad and drunk to be fucked. He climbs in and lets himself be locked in. He deserves this.

“Gonna take me to jail?” He asks, pressing his face to the grate between the front and back seats.

“Wasn’t planning on it. What’d you do?”

“I got Guerin killed. ‘M an accessory.”Alex says, staring at the back of Max’s head through the grate.

“He’s not dead.”

“He is.” Alex drops his head to the glass, cool and solid against this temple. “I told you about my dad. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

“Michael is not dead. If he was dead I would know.” Max’s mouth is a grim line that sours his whole face in the rear view mirror. “I’d know.”

Alex kicks the back of seat but it doesn’t even shake. Police cars are reinforced. Damnit. “DeLucas couldn’t get any kinda read on him. You expect me to believe that freaky twin thing works on a guy you’re not even related to?”

“Believe what you want. I know what I know.”

“Yeah, well, so do I, and what I don’t know is why my dad’s doing still walking around.”

“No evidence. Even your statement is circumstantial. There’s not enough for a warrant to search his property let alone for an arrest. I’m still going to try and get one.”

Alex slumps back and closes his eyes. He can see Guerin smiling at him behind his eyelids, see his face twisted with pain. He doesn’t know what came after and the not knowing is torture because every idea he has is worse than the next.

“He’s out there. Your dad is at the top of my list but we’re not going to stop looking there. No matter what happened, we’re going to find him.” 

Alex doesn’t answer. There’s nothing to say. Max is in law enforcement and he and his sister technically have more right to be invested in Michael than he ever did. He’s been gone for years and they were really only friends for a few months. 

And he could actually be wrong. 

The problem with being forced to sit still and think is that he has actually _think_.

His dad’s an abusive son of a bitch but murder? Alex managed to get through his entire tour without killing anyone and he’s proud of that fact. He doesn’t know what his father’s combat experience was like but now that he’s had his own, he knows there’s a difference between violence that strikes in the heat of the moment, in anger and in panic and cold premeditation. He’s seen it. 

What his father did that day, when he cut the air from Alex’s lungs with his bare hands and destroyed Michael’s hand, that had come from a place of rage, his fury a match creating a flash fire from the kindling of existing disgust and disappointment and hate. 

What Alex has been imagining for days (something clandestine, quiet, in the middle of the night maybe, with a gun to Michael’s head, one smooth application of pressure to the trigger with an index finger, an explosion that no one would be around to hear and the light behind his shining eyes are out forever) would have taken more purposeful planning. It’d be a risk, a big one. He’s not sure Jesse Manes would put his career and reputation on the line for a little thing like who he slept with, especially not when he’d already done so much damage and taken such total victory over them both. 

That just makes it worse. Because if it’s possible that his dad didn’t do something to Michael(and Alex has to admit that it is), then what? What the hell else is there? Where could Michael be? What could have happened to him?

Anything. Absolutely fucking anything, none of it good, because there’s nothing so good on Heaven or Earth that could have made him break contact with both Evans twins. He’s the kind of person who liked to share his joy. 

He doesn’t say anything to Max because if he knew, then he’d go after him, wouldn’t he? Fuck, there’s too many possibilities and not enough real options. Fuck.

“I hate this.” Alex says finally, because it’s true and it’s all he has left. “He was supposed to have left for something better, not just be gone.”

Max doesn’t respond and they ride the rest of the way without talking. There’s just the occasional crackle of the police radio and the town slipping past them quiet and unbothered by the gaping hole in it. 

When they pull to a stop at the DeLucas’, Max gets out and opens the door. Alex would climb out but there’s no room to with Max blocking the door. He lifts an eyebrow, or tries to, he’s not sure how that comes across with how tired and drunk he is, but Max isn’t moving.

“What is it, Evans?”

“I’m glad he had you before-“ He waves a hand to encompass the state of missing that is Michael Guerin. “Michael’s always been the best of us, you know, and he’s always deserved more than he got. Always. So, I’m glad he had someone who loved him as much as you seem to.”

God, it’d have been kinder if Max had pulled out his gun and shot him point blank in the chest. Alex puts a hand on his chest and shoves so that he can get out of this car, away from this man, and soon, out of this fucking town. He can’t do this. He just can’t. 

Maria and Mimi don’t try and stop him from leaving the next day. They just hug him and remind him to call once in awhile. He’s on his way back to Florida by noon, never mind the exorbitant fee from the rental car company for ending the rental agreement early and the airline for changing his flight. He doesn’t care so long as he can put Roswell behind him.

He goes back to work. He re-enlists. He goes back to war. He sleeps with a Navy helo pilot in Fallujah with umber skin and laughing green eyes who takes incessant pictures for his two sisters back home who wants to get to know him. He hooks up with a Marine stationed with him at Peterson with a son from a high school misstep and small round burn scars on his pale arms that Alex doesn’t make the mistake of touching twice. Both lasts for almost a year before Alex ends things, realizing that he can’t reach back through the haze of his own issues to give enough of himself to make anything real. There’s too much of him left back in New Mexico, lost in unanswered questions and a hundred thousand alternate possibilities for his life. 

He fights and works and laughs and lives and gets blown to shit and nearly dies and puts himself back together with pieces missing. Through it all, he thinks about Michael Guerin, and wonders (and wants him), wonders (and misses him), wonders (and loves him) but there’s never an answer. By the time he gets to his new posting in Roswell, just in time for his ten year reunion, Alex has almost accepted that there never will be.

**Author's Note:**

> Notes: 
>   * Eglin AFB in Mary Esther, Florida is the home base of AF Special Operations. The USAF also owns land out on Santa Rosa Island that is restricted to the public past the residential and protected land on Ft. Walton Beach. Just sayin', surf break's not great but hella good beaches, decent Mardi Gras, and it's bushwacker country which is basically an alcoholic milkshake. There's so many worse places to be stationed. Hilariously, the area around Eglin is known for it's high volume of UFO reports.
>   * Matthew Shepherd, Brandon Teena, and Barry Winchell are all highly publicized cases of men who were murdered for being on the queer spectrum in the 1990s. The sailor who was murdered for his orientation is August Provost and took place in 2009 prior to the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell.
>   * Somebody That I Used To Know went viral in America in the spring of 2012, and yes, that's absolutely where the title comes from.
> 



End file.
